“Using the AWS Service Catalog, we will have a controlled way to deliver cloud services to all our global regions without impacting their business activities.”

John HutchinsonDirector IT Infrastructure/SCTS Group IT Cloud Manager, TechnipFMC

TechnipFMC

TechnipFMC enhances security, provisions IT services quickly, and creates a repeatable foundation for future application migrations using the AWS Service Catalog. The company offers global project management, engineering, and construction services to organizations in the energy industry. TechnipFMC will use the AWS Service Catalog to provision and deploy IT services through a central console.

Benefits of AWS

TechnipFMC is a world leader in project management, engineering, and construction for the energy industry. From the deepest subsea oil and gas developments to the largest and most complex offshore and onshore infrastructures, TechnipFMC provides innovative technologies to meet the world’s energy challenges. With a presence in 45 countries, the organization has state-of-the-art industrial assets on all continents and operates a fleet of specialized vessels for pipeline installation and subsea construction. The company has offices in Paris, France; London, England; and Houston, Texas.

To scale to support rapid growth, TechnipFMC needed to ensure security and compliance for its global sites. The company specifically sought to enhance security for the perimeter networks supporting its client-facing applications. “We had a need for better DMZ consistency across our global locations,” says John Hutchinson, director IT infrastructure/SCTS group IT cloud manager for TechnipFMC. “There is a lot of confidential customer data that needs to be protected by our systems.”

TechnipFMC also wanted to create a consistent, self-service solution to enable its global IT employees to easily provision cloud infrastructure to migrate externally facing Microsoft SharePoint sites to the cloud. The company wanted to migrate the sites incrementally, at its own pace, and without causing service disruption.

Additionally, the company wanted to build a foundational process for future SharePoint migrations. “We wanted to build a reproducible, secure, self-service model that could be automatically deployed,” says Hutchinson.

TechnipFMC, which had already been exploring Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud technology provider, engaged AWS Advanced Consulting Partner Flux7 for guidance. Flux7, with its deep knowledge in this space, determined that the AWS Service Catalog was the right model to support the migration of the TechnipFMC SharePoint sites to the cloud.

AWS Service Catalog gives organizations the ability to centrally manage catalogs of IT services, including virtual machine images, servers, software, and database images. Users can quickly deploy these services via a self-service portal. Using AWS CloudFormation, Flux7 built IT service templates for TechnipFMC, which included specific TechnipFMC security and regulatory compliance requirements. TechnipFMC worked with Flux7 to assign specific administrative and user roles to ensure appropriate access to corporate assets.

Utilizing the Flux7 AWS Service Catalog solution, TechnipFMC conducted a proof of concept (POC), during which it was able to provision and deploy infrastructure through the central AWS Service Catalog console. The company migrated more than 30 SharePoint sites to the AWS Cloud during the POC. Flux7 also trained the TechnipFMC team to manage the AWS Service Catalog solution to facilitate future migrations.

Using the AWS Service Catalog during its POC, TechnipFMC enforced security and compliance standards in every deployment, which enhanced overall security for its perimeter networks. Once the environment is in production, TechnipFMC will be able to meet its security objectives because all of the services provisioned through the AWS Service Catalog are based on secure templates.

TechnipFMC was able to provision new resources on schedule during the POC instead of waiting for a request-and-approval process to take place. “Using the AWS Service Catalog, we will have a controlled way to deliver cloud services to all our global regions without impacting their business activities,” says Hutchinson.

Because the AWS Service Catalog enables repeatable, consistent deployments, TechnipFMC has created a foundation for future migrations that meet the company’s security and standardization goals. “Due to a recent merger, we inherited 30 new global locations, many with their own DMZ solutions,” says Hutchinson. “Because of the foundation we’ve put in place through the AWS Service Catalog, we know what to expect, and we’re confident we’ll be able to quickly consolidate those sites.”

Additionally, TechnipFMC expects to reduce its operational costs. “From an IT perspective, we anticipate a massive cost savings from using the AWS Service Catalog,” says Hutchinson. “Through the use of AWS Service Catalog, we will require fewer resources to make everything operate in the cloud, compared with our traditional data center model. And we will only pay for resources we use, instead of paying for new hardware that we might not even use. Overall, we’re excited about the future. We are a cloud-first company, and we look forward to relying on AWS more and more as we grow.”

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Flux7 is an IT consulting company and AWS Advanced Consulting Partner. The organization helps enterprises in a range of industries across the globe to quickly build secure, compliant, and highly scalable environments by using automation, DevOps, and implementation best practices. Flux7 trains internal IT teams to manage their own AWS infrastructure, helping them own and extend their IT modernization projects.